It started with me and my wife walking onto our back porch for a cig. right after it got dark. She actually had to point it out to me but when she did I noticed a bright orange/red ball of light fade into brightness, hold for a second to three seconds then dim out, only to reappear in the same spot and then suddenly split into two which faded out almost immediately.

Normally we both try to throw off easy possible explanations, seeing as I have been into space and astronomy my whole life, but could not find any logical explanation other than maybe it was a missile from a military aircraft.

After my wife walked inside to get out of the cold, no more than 5 minutes later I witnessed the same light. I did not call out to my wife because, as before, the light faded after the same appearance, but quickly after is disappeared it came back and went out a few times. Which is when I yelled for my wife to come out, even got a neighbor curious. She came to see the very end of this appearance which was the light flaring up again only this time it split into 2 evenly sized lights which immediately faded and did not return .

As if that was not enough I was so amped up I told her I was going out front to get a better view and watch longer to try to see if I could spot patterns or anything. Once I got out front it took a good 20-30 minutes before my next strange sighting. This time it was a bunch of individual blinking lights. No pattern whatsoever to how they blinked which is usually what I look for to debunk it as a known aircraft, but as I watched I noticed the blinking lights, which were much smaller and whiter than the previous one, had started to make 180 degree immediate turns. As if they bounced off a wall and started going the opposite direction with no certain heading. For example on would go straight, immediately turn around , then suddenly head straight up or down. It was not just one it was all of them. It literally looked as if lights were popping all around all at once , and then as if related, the bright ball of orange/red light appeared just off to the left center of the group ! or blinking starts. only this time it flared and died out and did not return at all. Soon after the blinking lights disappeared. They did not leave, let me be clear of that. They disappeared. Meaning I was watching them all blinking, and one by one , sometimes two at a time, would just vanish, and stop blinking. I tried to think maybe cloud cover was causing the sudden loss of the lights but I pinpointed background stars in the same general area to which the lights were and could still see the stars.

Finally after my mother arrived she was getting groceries out of her truck and I was still outside maybe 10 minutes after my last sighting. I suddenly yelled at her to look, because she is a big anti ufo person, and as she did she pointed out that it had went out and moved to the right. I heard her then get into her truck to get more stuff while I was still staring and the light was still there it amazingly suddenly had another exactly same light appear next to it and unbelievably came together into one and vanish just like the first sighting but backwards. After which I did not see that light anymore.

No more than 30 min later I witnessed several more small blinking lights behaving really strange, like disappearing and reappearing going the opposite way, or suddenly appearing and then as if it was never there it is gone.

I know how silly this sounds but I have been a firm believer of science and facts my whole life. For 20 years of my life I have lived at this house and looked up at the same sky countless nights without seeing something even relatively as strange. I know how aircraft lights behave and satellites. They have patterns. The closest pattern any of these lights had was only once when me and my wife saw the cluster of lights blink shortly almost in sync. I really would like to know if maybe it was just some strange military testing or flying that was going on, or possibly military flares, but the way it happened, I can't, for the life of me, begin to understand what I saw. Please help